At Ghent University, we strive to educate people who dare to think about the challenges of tomorrow. For that purpose, we provide education that is embedded in six strategic objectives: Think Broadly, Keep Researching, Cultivate Talent, Contribute, Extend Horizons, Opt for Quality.
Ghent University continuously focuses on quality assurance and quality culture. The Ghent University's quality assurance system offers information on each study programme’s unique selling points, and on its strengths and weaknesses with regard to quality assurance.

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Ghent University's Education Objectives

Quality Assurance at Ghent University

1. Knowledge creation: the criminology programme highly values a step-by-step build-up of knowledge. A graduate of the Master’s programme is a flexibly deployable criminologist who has nevertheless been able to specialize sufficiently. Our students are constantly encouraged to engage in critical self-reflection.
2. Multidisciplinary theoretical offer: a criminologist is a social scientist who learns to fathom “transgressive behaviour” (crime) using theoretical insights from various disciplines. Students acquire a critical view on the causes, prevention and policy approach of crime.
3. Step-by-step methodological deepening: from the first year, the future criminologist learns to use the various academic/scientific methods that criminology is rich in. In the senior years, there is room for a thorough deepening of quantitative and qualitative research methods.
4. Strong embedding in the professional field: the work placement in the Master’s is one of the most important assets of our study programme. For three months, students are immersed in the practice of various sectors and learn to function independently and in a team.
5. A combination English-taught course units and internationally acclaimed research allows our students to come into contact with the criminology jargon and with high-quality international research in various course units. For the purpose of the Bachelor’s and Master’s dissertation, we teach our students to process academic literature gradually and independently.

1. Our programme boasts a team of enthusiastic and committed lecturers who value good communication with students highly.
2. Focus on quality education: we monitor the quality of our education in our programme closely. For this, we do not only rely on our own efforts but also take into account our students’ opinions.
3. Student counselling: we place great store by solid student support. Tailor-made tutoring is available, partly thanks to the extensive efforts of our faculty’s tutorial services.
4. Room for practical experience: we guarantee every student’s opportunity to gain high-quality practical experience throughout the programme. We have a transparent and efficient work placement policy. The compulsory work placement in the Master’s curriculum contributes to training competent criminologists through experiential learning in a real professional context. The course unit ‘Project Contemporary Criminology’ in the Bachelor’s programme contains the professional competencies that we wish our students to attain. This course unit aims to create awareness among students about the nature, scope and diversity of criminology as a professional field and allows students to prepare optimally for the work placement in the Master’s.
5. Learning to work in a team: in several course units as well as in the integration seminar, students are trained to become team players and to take joint responsibility for the successful completion of a task (a topical and criminology-related issue).

1. Stimulating participation: we think it is important that our students feel actively involved in the day-to-day working of our study programme. That is why we encourage them to exercise their right to participate, e.g. when deciding upon a curricular reform, or by participating in surveys. By means of focus group sessions, we involve our students in a diversity screening of the academic programme.
2. Internationalisation: the programme aims to stimulate international experiences and to inform students and teaching staff about the various options. Because studying abroad is not an obvious and feasible choice for everyone, we want to focus more on Internationalization@Home initiatives and on expanding internationalization of our programme.
3. Streamlining the Master’s dissertation process: we strongly value and encourage students to carry out empirical research. However, the match between student and supervisor of the Master’s dissertation could be improved. This aspect, together with the Master’s dissertation vade-mecum can be made more explicit and communicated more transparently via the Master’s dissertation brochure. This is a weakness that we will improve together with the students.
4. More focus on sustainability, entrepreneurship and social engagement: Although the study programme places great store by these topics, we address them in a rather ad hoc and fragmented manner throughout the curriculum. We want to embed these topics more firmly into the curriculum and offer students maximum opportunities to develop the related competencies.

This study programme is accredited by the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch: NVAO). Accreditation was extended following the positive outcome of the institutional review in 2017. Programme quality was validated by a quality review (peer-learning visit) in 2016. A screening of the Education Monitor by Ghent University’s Education Quality Board is planned in the years 2021-2024.

This information was last updated on 01/06/2021.
In case of questions or suggestions with regard to the publicly available information, please contact the study programme.